In a decision that shocked Wall Street, the US government denied the application of Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss — the brothers who once claimed to be co-inventors of Facebook — to operate an exchange-traded fund (ETF) to make it easier for investors to buy Bitcoin.

The decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission torpedoes the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, which currency investors had been closely watching.

The decision immediately sent the price of the crypto-currency down 14 percent, to about $1,022.68 after the decision, which came shortly after the market closed. It had traded as high as to $1,303.15 in earlier Friday trading.

While many investors had plunged headlong into the currency, expecting the SEC to greenlight the ETF, others had expressed doubts about how much control the Winklevoss brothers would have had over the value of the assets.